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Recently, a Christian testimony online went practically viral, labeled "Why I hate religion, but love Jesus". Just like his letter said, Jefferson seemed to hate religion, yes. However, he also considered himself Christian and claimed to follow God. Contradiction? Not really.

While I agree that their views were quite wide-spread and scattered in relation to one another, your assertion that the founders of American government were mostly atheist or non-standard is pretty misleading, almost enough so to be called a flat-out lie. Take a quick look at the biographies of just the key figures, the "Founding Fathers" of America. Four of the usual seven recognized were self-declared Christians(those five being John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay) , though there ends the shared views on religion, it seems. Jefferson can be added as a fifth, if you take the usually quoted letter to Benjamin Rush as genuine and properly preserved; "To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian, in the only sense in which he wished any one to be...", and I don't see any reason to doubt it. So five of seven Founding Fathers are Christian, then; where are the atheists you refer to?

"Just because" is not an excuse I've ever heard a scientist use. In any case, I think OP actually has something; the discovery is a measurement of what's happening, not an explanation. It seems they still don't know why fat and polar compounds interact the way they do, and in fact are still baffled, because they see no reason for them not to interact normally rather than repel each other. However, we can now measure to what degree it occurs. Anybody want to correct me or clarify? I'm actually pretty interested here.

Okay. What you're saying makes logical sense. It's much smarter and easier to believe your words over mine. Because of that, I'm sorry for arguing with you. It was a stupid thing of me to do in the first place, and I've been wasting your time. This is one of the 'lead a horse to water' situations; I can give you whatever supporting facts and arguments all day long, but there's no forcing faith into someone, and the bible study I went to last night kind of rammed that home for me. The general topic was "an unfeigned faith", so there was a lot of discussion about what faith is. Here's what I heard and believed - faith is not a human ability. Being faithful isn't just tapping into some hidden reserve of strength and using it to to have faith in the Lord. Hebrews 12:2 says "Looking away unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith...". Romans 3:22 - "...the faith of Jesus Christ, to all those who believe..." and 10:17 "So faith comes out of hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ."

All of these have something in common. They all mention faith, but they all indicate that it's not our own faith. Actually, it's not. Christ(God) authored it. In other words, we really have no ability to believe on our own - it has to be given by God. There was in one of the gospels a woman who had some internal bleeding, and heard Jesus would be passing through her town. She thought, "if I can just touch his garment, I'll be healed". She thought that because she heard and knew that he had been going around healing people - she heard something of the gospel, the gospel which is God(John 1:1). So she had a little bit of Christ already in her, and this enabled her to have faith. If you don't want to hear the word, you simply won't have faith, and there's nothing I can do to change that besides give you the chance to hear it and pray you'll listen.

You have described a human's bodily function. It's probably better to describe life as simply something with proper function. If it has proper function, we say it is alive. If it loses that proper function, we say it has died(dead batteries, dead mouse, brain dead). If I with a beating heart and functioning brain tell you that I'm dead at this point in time, what would you think?

If want and greed have to be bred into humans, then where did it originate? Yes, exactly. It originated with humans before it was bred into other humans. It still to this day originates in humans, as well as being bred into us. Children learn to take away rather quickly, you'll notice.

If matter has existed infinitely, it is also possible that other entities can exist infinitely. You cannot say then "there is no God" if you accept that an entity can exist infinitely.

Let's see if I understand what you're saying here, since you seem to be on an entirely different topic. In your opening, you say that the verse doesn't support my statement. It does. True, it is translated "vain", not "void"(I tend to use the Recovery version more than others - the translation is updated to be more accurate and understandable). God created the Earth neither vain nor void. He made it for a reason. Next. You're suggesting that the "he" might not refer to God, and in fact might possibly refer to another god. You're saying this based on the difference in translations, both/all of which *can be taken to mean the same thing*, but can also be taken to mean a different thing, and therefore you argue that it's... what? A coincidence that they can all coincide? They're different translations, all coming out to the same meaning. To argue that they all mean something different is silly or a misunderstanding on my part.Next, you link that to an assumed fact monotheism didn't exist at the time. Well, before the Old Testament was written, maybe it didn't. I couldn't know. But once the Old Testament comes into existence, clearly monotheism exists, since the OT tells of a monotheism. Therefore, in the OT, that "god figure" referenced (the one who calls Himself "Lord") it's pretty safe to say, is the one God they worship. That's fairly clear, I think...You mention "Thou shalt have no other gods(lower case 'g')...". Why did He say that? There must have been other gods! You're absolutely right when you think that. There were. For example... Golden calves. Do you see? He wasn't saying "There are other gods, but worship me, not them." Just, "I'm God. Don't try and make any others(mainly because that's silly, but also because God wants man's attention. He has a purpose for men to fulfill, and it grinds to a halt when we look away).

Lastly... science has yet to explain the discharge known as lightning. Also life and death. I think the biggest things science has yet to explain is "What is it about humans that makes them so profoundly aware(conscious)?/Why do we desire more than our livelihood(greed, want - almost completely unrepresented in other lifeforms)?" and "Where/from what did matter originate?". Humans still believe in these figures because we have the innate feeling that there *is* a God, and so we hunt for one. Now ask me why.

Actually, those two are reconcilable, mostly because the bible doesn't say He created the universe (or even just the Earth) in seven days. Take a look at the first two verses in the bible. In almost every translation of the bible, the second verse will start out "And the earth was without form, and void..."Which can't be right. Somewhere which I have forgotten eight dozen times and really should note down in Isaiah(and if you reply to this later, I'll probably be able to ask someone who'll remember) it says that God did not create the Earth void. Conflict? Yes. Almost. That word translated "was" should be "became" (for a bit of reinforcement of this, look at Gen 19:26 - the exact same word is used in that verse, describing Lot's wife "becoming" a pillar of salt. We can be fairly certain she wasn't a pillar of salt before that point, so translating the word as "was" would be silly. Instead, it's translated as "became", as it should be in Gen 1:2). So now that it's properly translated, what have we got? First verse - God created the heavens and the Earth, there's the universe. Second verse - the Earth becomes formless. We have a time gap, in which *something* happened. Specifically, Satan rebelled, and God laid down judgement for it. Job 9:5-7 talks about God turning over the mountains, shaking the Earth out of place, and "sealing the stars"(we can really only guess at the last part's meaning, but I think it's safe to say the Earth got no light or heat for a good long while). So, the Earth was an empty wasteland, floating through space. The seven days? Clean up and restoration, because God still had a desire for man. Questions? Comments? In the words of my current Govt professor, "I'll even take threats!"

Okay... but then does that not describe an agnostic, rather than an atheist? Here are the first three sentences of Wikipedia's description of an atheist.

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities. Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.

It would seem from this that an atheist not only has no belief in deities, he also denies their existence. No?

What rubycodez said. My family actually raised dairy goats when I was younger, and though goats tend to be six times more demonic and messier to boot, they had clean hooves(well, clean of poo) and healthy quarters, 24/7. Plus, they were never chained o.O. I don't know where you were seeing all this, but it's definitely not the norm.